Sams Teach Yourself C# in 24 Hours

By James Foxall and Wendy Haro-Chun

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Authors
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Introduction
  • Audience and Organization
  • Conventions Used in This Book
  • Onward and Upward!
  • Part I. The Visual Studio Environment
  • Hour 1. A C# Programming Tour
  • Hour 2. Navigating C#
  • Hour 3. Understanding Objects and Collections
  • Hour 4. Understanding Events
  • Part II. Building a User Interface
  • Hour 5. Building FormsPart I
  • Hour 6. Building FormsPart II
  • Hour 7. Working with the Traditional Controls
  • Hour 8. Advanced Controls
  • Hour 9. Adding Menus and Toolbars to Forms
  • Hour 10. Drawing and Printing
    • Understanding the Graphics Object
    • Working with Pens
    • Using System Colors
    • Working with Rectangles
    • Drawing Shapes
    • Drawing Text
    • Persisting Graphics on a Form
    • Build a Graphics Project Example
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Workshop
  • Part III. Making Things HappenProgramming!
  • Hour 11. Creating and Calling Methods
  • Hour 12. Using Constants, Data Types, Variables, and Arrays
  • Hour 13. Performing Arithmetic, String Manipulation, and Date/Time Adjustments
  • Hour 14. Making Decisions in C# Code
  • Hour 15. Looping for Efficiency
  • Hour 16. Debugging Your Code
  • Hour 17. Designing Objects Using Classes
  • Hour 18. Interacting with Users
  • Part IV. Working with Data
  • Hour 19. Performing File Operations
  • Hour 20. Controlling Other Applications Using Automation
  • Hour 21. Working with a Database
  • Part V. Deploying Solutions and Beyond
  • Hour 22. Deploying a Solution
  • Hour 23. Introduction to Web Development
  • Hour 24. The 10,000-Foot View
  • Appendix A. Answers to Quizzes/Exercises

Working with Pens

A pen is an object that defines line-drawing characteristics. Pens are used to define color, line width, and line style (solid, dashed, and so on), and pens are used with almost all the drawing methods you'll learn about in this hour.

C# supplies a number of predefined pens, and you can also create your own. To create your own pen, use the following syntax:

Pen variable = new Pen(color, 
   width);

After a pen is created, you can set its properties to adjust its appearance. For example, all Pen objects have a DashStyle property that determines the appearance of lines drawn with the pen. Table 10.2 lists the possible values for DashStyle.

Table 10.2. Possible Values for DashStyle

The enumeration for DashStyle is part of the Drawing.Drawing2D object. Therefore, to create a new pen and use it to draw an ellipse, for example, you could use the following code:

Pen objMyPen = new Pen(System.Drawing.Color.DarkBlue, 3);
objMyPen.DashStyle = System.Drawing.Drawing2D.DashStyle.Dot;

C# includes many standard pens, which are available via the System.Drawing.Pens class, as in the following:

objPen = System.Drawing.Pens.DarkBlue;

When drawing using the techniques discussed shortly, you can use custom pens or system-defined pens—it's your choice.

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